Leo expected to appoint new PCPM president - Who will it be?

Who will Pope Leo choose to lead his safeguarding sounding board?

In his first major Vatican appointment, Pope Leo XIV is expected to appoint soon a new president for the papal global safeguarding commission.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley and members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Credit: Vatican Media.

The appointment, which Vatican sources say could come as soon as Saturday, comes as the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors faces challenges to demonstrate credibility both in the Vatican and across the Church, and as the papacy of a canon lawyer could portend new reforms on safeguarding for the universal Church.

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Established by Pope Francis in 2014, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is charged with the broad mandate to “promote the protection of the dignity of minors and vulnerable adults, using the forms and methods, consonant with the nature of the Church, which they consider most appropriate, as well as through their cooperation with individuals and groups pursuing these same objectives.”

In short, the body is meant to be for the pontiff a global sounding board on safeguarding, meant to provide assessment to the pope and other ecclesial leaders on both Vatican policy and the safe environment issues which arise in dioceses around the world.

But the commission has had a rocky history in its decade of Vatican work.

Led since its foundation by Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the commission president, members and leaders have complained that the organization has little authority to actually undertake its mission — that while it is tasked with assessing best practices at the Vatican and in dioceses, it has not had the authority to impose compliance with those best practices, and no other Vatican office seems inclined to audit or oversee safeguarding compliance around the world.

A 2022 decision from Pope Francis to merge the PCPM into the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith left some members concerned about the institutional autonomy of the organization, leading — in part — to the 2023 resignation of respected safe environment expert Fr. Hans Zollner, who said it was “impossible” for him to continue on the commission without clarity on the authority and structure of the PCPM.

That situation has left episcopal conferences, and in some places individual dioceses, basically on their own to learn from PCPM recommendations, but without Vatican oversight. While in recent years the PCPM has been more empowered to assess global safe environment practices, and report to the pope on progress, some members have questioned whether reporting on deficiencies will actually lead to change, and whether anyone in the Vatican is actually listening to what the commission has to say.

The Vatican-based scandals surrounding priests like Fr. Marko Rupnik and Bishop Oscar Zanchetta have led to even more frustration among some PCPM members and consultants, who say the Vatican itself is not observing basic practices essential for providing justice, accountability, and healing to victims of clerical sexual abuse and misconduct.

Amid that history, Pope Francis in March pushed the PCPM to work more closely and collaboratively with other offices of the Roman Curia in order to build a safeguarding culture within the Vatican, and to promote it elsewhere in the Church. But observers have said this exhortation landed poorly with the commission, as it seemed to discount the difficulty commission members have had getting Vatican dicasteries to give it attention, or to see that members and staff are involved in policy-making.

In short, Leo became pope after a charged couple of years for the PCPM, with its future undetermined and — with Cardinal O’Malley 81 years old — its leadership in transition.

Given all of that, observers have speculated since Leo’s election about what the pontiff might do with the commission, and its work.

Even as the PCPM gets set to deliver more universal guidelines in the next year — along with a vademecum on pastoral care and responses to victims — it depends a great deal on Leo to determine how much weight to give those documents, and how much papal emphasis to put behind them. And it also depends on Leo to decide what kind of leadership will best give the PCPM a sufficient stature for leadership, both within the Vatican and more broadly.

Some have speculated that the pope might decide to give the PCPM a kind of fresh start, with new leadership, experienced in safeguarding but not tied into the internal and external challenges the commission has faced in recent years. Some curial sources have speculated that the pontiff might give the commission another American leader, given the reputation of the U.S. Church in Rome for taking a proactive approach to safeguarding issues — even if that reputation is not widely appreciated among Catholics.

One name floated by observers has been Archbishop Shawn McKnight of Kansas City, who has emerged among U.S. bishops as a leader on safeguarding reform within the U.S. Church.

But sources close to the commission have told The Pillar that the pontiff is more likely to pick a new leader from among the commission’s leadership, for the sake of continuity.

Two names among the commission’s membership have circulated — and while the commission’s statutes do not require the president be a bishop, both the names to emerge in discussions about the PCPM are bishops.

The first is the Maronite Bishop Peter Karam, who is Lebanese born but spent much of his priesthood in the U.S., as a priest of Maronite Eparchy of Los Angeles.

Karam, now leading an eparchy in Paris, directed his eparchy’s safe environment office in Los Angeles for nearly two decades, has chaired a review board, and developed safe environment policies for the Los Angeles eparchy and the broader Maronite Church.

The other name floated is that of Archbishop Thibault Verny of Chambery, whose work as auxiliary bishop of Paris led him to reach an agreement with the city’s public prosecutor’s office to facilitate reporting allegations against priests to civic authorities.

The archbishop now leads the French bishops’ conference’s safeguarding efforts, and, at the same time, has built a reputation for protecting the due process rights of priests, overseeing a residential program for clerics accused of abuse that would provide them with medical, psychiatric, and psychological monitoring as they faced investigations.

The aim of the program was to reduce self-harm among clerics accused of abuse.

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There are high expectations for Pope Leo among safeguarding expectations in the Church, and a widespread desire to see Vatican praxis give a stronger witness of the importance of overseeing safeguarding initiatives with integrity and alacrity. A great deal of that will depend on Leo personally. But the pontiff also needs someone who will tell him the truth — which is the most important job of the PCPM’s president. Who that will be should soon be apparent.